In Honorem Cecidit
by Foxbracken - Phoenix Everren
Summary: Mallory Rodriguez. Crippled fourth grader at Sandy Hook Elementary who reads Warriors to get away from reality, wishing it was true, but her innocence could not save her on that day.


"Get into the corner!" Adam Lanza snarled, waving around the gun at the terrified children. "I said now!" He bellowed when one child didn't obey. When the shaking teacher tried to nudge along the petrified fourth grader along, but the girl was too wrapped in fear to move, let alone breathe. Sniggering softly, Adam set the gun and pulled the trigger.

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Mallory Rodriguez scribbled some doodles onto a blank notebook page, making pretty unicorns and fierce dragons; the young fourth grader planning to give it to her parents for Christmas. Glancing around with innocent blue eyes, she turned the page and started to draw out her favorite cat from the _Warriors _series: Cinderpelt.

You see, Mallory could understand Cinderpelt and easily connected to the crippled she-cat, Mallory was crippled too. Her left leg was pigeon toed, and it curled toward her right leg awkwardly, causing her to limp. But she was fine with it, she had Cinderpelt.

Of course, Mallory was devastated when Cinderpelt died protecting Sorreltail and her newborn kits from the badger, but felt it was brave for the crippled she-cat to do, especially when, the whole time, Cinderpelt knew she was going to die. Of course, that made Mallory like Cinderpelt even more.

Yet, here the child was, drawing out Cinderpelt on her notebook, so young and innocent, not paying attention to what the teacher was teaching. As Mallory drew, she made sure to make Cinderpelt's hind left leg look crippled and to give her a spark in her eyes to show how carefree the young cat was. A smile played on the fourth grader's face as she finished her drawing of Cinderpelt.

Carefully, Mallory tore out the page and slipped it under her chair into the metal basket below; proud of her work. Glancing up, she saw her teachers was taking questions, so she went back to her doodling of unicorns and dragons, lost in her own fantasy.

Tearing out the page, Mallory pulled out the picture of Cinderpelt and placed it on her desk, above the doodles. Getting another clean sheet, Mallory went to work on designing herself as a cat, imagining her as Cinderpelt's apprentice. _Twistedleg… _Mallory always loved that name, along with Crookedjaw and Brokentail. And Twistedleg was her fantasy medicine cat name.

Yes, Mallory could've drawn herself as a leader with no disabilities.

Yes, Mallory could have made her Cinderpelt's apprentice without the lame leg.

Mallory knew she could make herself appear perfect as a cat with a good name, not a name that reminded her of her leg. She loved who she was and wanted to make herself that way in the warrior world.

Besides, those cats were less cruel then some people Mallory had heard of. Like her grandfather, like Joseph Koney, like many other people. Those people made Mallory want to crawl into the book and join ThunderClan, the Clan of the lion-hearted, is what Mallory always said.

… Maybe if StarClan was real, maybe if _Warriors_ were real, then maybe Mallory could've known about the man that was going to come and start shooting, maybe then Mallory would have warned her teacher and gotten the police to arrest him before any families were shattered.

But _Warriors _was fiction, so was StarClan, ThunderClan, ShadowClan, RiverClan, and WindClan. So were Firestar, Cinderpelt, Squirrelflight, Ashfur, Bramleclaw, Stormfur, Graystripe, Ravenpaw, and Sandstorm.

All of it was fiction. Fiction that left some longing for it to be real, but it was just made up, a story to keep people entertained.

It certainly kept Mallory entertained while she stayed in the hospital, recovering from a benign tumor, being treated for her pigeon toed foot, and for staying by her father's side as he recovered from breaking his ribs after falling off a ladder.

It opened the gateway for Mallory's imagination to bloom and blossom, to spring from the earth as a tiny sapling and allowing it to grow into a strong oak. Letting her to drift from reality and letting herself grow in her mind, opening her mind to writing. And Mallory did indeed write. She wrote fan fictions about _Warriors _that made her proud, though if you or I read it, it would seem poorly written and such, but to a fourth grader, it was perfect.

All this writing started to get the wheels turning in Mallory's brain, getting her to make up her own stories. Her own stories where the main character was lame, where the main character was safe and free.

All of this innocence… so strong for a girl so young and crippled, for a girl that has seen so much in her young years.

At last… this innocence could not save her. Nor would it save nineteen other students and six adults. Nor would it save the families that were to be shattered before Christmas, nor the country from the shock of such a crime.

The innocence that kept the girl drawing and not knowing that, at that moment, her teacher was fighting off a man from going into that classroom with a gun. Only when the man broke down the door and flung the teacher down like a ragdoll and the screams of her fellow classmates wake Mallory from her little world.

When Adam began waving his loaded gun around and screaming for the children to get in the corner got Mallory out of her seat so fast, she knocked down her drawing of Cinderpelt and her doodles to the floor, but when the gun muzzle was pointing to her… she froze, paralyzed by fear.

"I said now!" Adam bellowed; eyes blazing yet hollow and blank. The teacher scrambled to her feet and rushed toward Mallory, trying to get her to move into the corner with the others. But Mallory couldn't move; she couldn't move because she was frozen on the inside. Her muscles and tendons were ice and her brain was only focusing on the sleek barrel pointed in her direction and the sneer of the man's face.

Because the young girl was frozen and because she was so innocent and didn't know all of the cruelness in this world, Mallory stayed put, and was shot.

Mallory watched as the bullet came flying out of the barrel, the smoke following quickly. She watched as it spun toward her chest and struck her in the heart, pain sparking through her body as the young girl fell to the ground, blood splattering her papers, covering the pretty unicorn and the fierce dragon, and staining Cinderpelt's crippled leg and chest where her heart would be.

Mallory screeched in pain, sobbing uncontrollably as her life was fading, only able to watch as her teacher was shot down too, but shot in the head.

Gazing up to the ceiling as Mallory watched her life end; Adam Lanza towered over her, glaring down with a sneer. And with that, Mallory managed to rasp weakly, "W-w-why?" before she took one finally breath and felt her life slip away, draining out of her like her breathes and her blood.

But, the very moment before Mallory died, she knew Cinderpelt was waiting for her in StarClan with open paws.

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**Total words: 1,193 words.**

**In Honorem ad Cecidit = In Honor of the Fallen in Latin.**

**I edited the mistakes I made. Thank you, Ponyiowa for reviewing it and showing my mistakes.**

**Oh yes, what I will explain what I mean by this: "Only when the man broke down the door and flung the teacher down like a ragdoll and the screams of her fellow classmates wake Mallory from her little world." Okay, you know how you get so absorbed in something, like a book, and you are oblivious about things going on around you? That is what Mallory was doing. She was oblivious to the things going on around her until the man slammed open the door, flung the teacher aside, and hearing the screams of her classmates got her attention and brought her back to reality.**

_**Don't be shocked that people die. Be surprised you're still alive. **_**- Cassie by Flyleaf.**


End file.
